Microplastics Beach Clean-up

Stay tuned for future beach clean-up dates!

The Exchange’s first microplastic beach clean-up of the summer was a great success. 34 volunteers met at The Eastsound Waterfront Park to help in the efforts of cleaning up this beach.

Our goals for this beach clean-up were to bring awareness to the growing problem we are facing with microplastics, to help educate our community on ways they can stop using plastic in their everyday lives, and to start cleaning up the overwhelming amount of microplastics that cover The Eastsound Waterfront Park beach.

We found nurdles, a variety of sizes of plastic in all colors, and hard and soft plastic. We discovered layers of plastic where it appears the plastic is breaking into smaller particles, leading one participant to recommend targeting larger plastic first on an ongoing basis to prevent future breaking down. We discovered that truly removing all the plastic from a 2 foot square area would take many, many hours. Overall, about 13 gallons of plastic were collected. Thank you to all the volunteers!